Microsoft December Patch Tuesday Update Fixes Six Critical Bugs

Microsoft patched 34 vulnerabilities that are part of its December Patch Tuesday release. A total of 20 vulnerabilities were rated critical and another 12 were rated important. Impacted are Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Exchange. Notable...

Cisco Patches Critical Playback Bugs in WebEx Players

Cisco Systems issued a Critical alert on Wednesday warning of multiple vulnerabilities in its popular WebEx player. Six bugs were listed in the security advisory, each of them relating to holes in Cisco WebEx Network Recording Player for Advanced Recording Format ARF and WebEx Recording Format WR...

Facebook Awards $100K to Researchers for Credential Spearphishing Detection Method

A group of researchers recently identified a real-time way to detect credential spearphishing attacks in enterprise settings. The discovery net the researchers $100,000 last week from Facebook, which awards money as part of its annual Internet Defense Prize partnership with USENIX Association. Th...

Motorola Moto G4, G5 Vulnerable to Local Root Shell Attacks

UPDATE Researchers say several Motorola handset models are vulnerable to a critical kernel command line injection flaw that could allow a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code on the devices. The two affected Motorola models are the Moto G4 and Moto G5. The warnings come from Alep...

Vanilla Forums Open Source Software Vulnerable to RCE, Host Header Injection Vulnerability

Popular open source forum software suffers from vulnerabilities that could let an attacker gain access to user accounts, carry out web-cache poisoning attacks, and in some instances, execute arbitrary code. Legal Hackers‘ Dawid Golunski found the vulnerabilities–a host header injection and an...

Docker Patches Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Docker has patched a privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2016-9962 that could lead to container escapes, allowing a hacker to affect operations of a host from inside a container. The vulnerability is rated high severity by some Linux distributions such as Arch Linux, which traces the problem t...

Siemens Patches Insufficient Entropy Vulnerability in ICS Systems

German industrial giant Siemens has provided a firmware update addressing vulnerabilities that are found in a popular line of its Desigo PX industrial control hardware used in controlling primarily HVAC systems in commercial buildings . On Wednesday, Siemens, in coordination with ICS-CERT, issued...

Microsoft Patches Zero Day Disclosed by Google

Microsoft followed through and today patched a zero-day vulnerability being exploited in public attacks that was disclosed by Google researchers nine days ago. The victims have yet to have been identified, but Microsoft did accuse the Sofacy APT gang of carrying out the attacks. Sofacy is general...

Apple Patches iOS Flaw Exploitable by Malicious JPEG

Apple on Monday patched a code execution vulnerability in iOS that could be exploited via a JPEG file crafted to take advantage of the flaw. Apple also issued its first round of patches for macOS Sierra as part of a large update that also included fixes for vulnerabilities found in Safari, Apple...

ICS-CERT Report Grim Reminder of State of Critical Infrastructure Security

U.S. critical infrastructure got another reminder this week that it needs to do more to protect itself from cyber attacks with the release of an annual government report. The NCCIC/ICS-CERT FY 2015 Annual Vulnerability Coordination Report points out that nagging issues continue to plague industri...

Details Surface on Patched Sandbox Violation Vulnerability in iOS

Apple patched an issue last week in iOS that could have allowed attackers to bypass the third-party app-sandbox protection mechanism on devices and read arbitrary managed preferences via a special app. The issue, which was present in versions of iOS prior to 8.4.1, stems from a vulnerability with...

January 2015 Oracle Critical Patch update

Oracle’s first Critical Patch Update of the year arrived Tuesday with its usual volume, and some disturbing fanfare. Oracle admins today are staring at 169 patches on their collective plates across the company’s product line. One of the more pressing fixes is for a an issue in the Oracle E-Busine...

Microsoft Schannel Bug Latest in Long Line of Serious Crypto Flaws

The critical vulnerability in the Schannel technology in Windows that Microsoft patched Tuesday is ripe for exploitation, experts say, and continues the long line of severe vulnerabilities in major SSL/TLS implementations in recent months. Secure Channel, also known as Schannel, is a technology...

Dyreza Banker Trojan Attackers Exploiting CVE-2014-4114 Windows Flaw

The Dyreza Trojan is nothing if not ambitious. The malware has been spotted doing a variety of interesting things in the last year, including bypassing SSL and targeting users of specific business apps. Now the Trojan is exploiting the recently disclosed CVE-2014-4114 vulnerability in Windows tha...

Three Vulnerabilities Exist in HP's Insight Diagnostics

There are multiple vulnerabilities in HP’s Insight Diagnostics server management tool that could be exploited by an attacker to run code and let them take over an infected computer. There is currently no fix available for the problem. According to an alert from the CERT Coordination Center,...

Safe Targeted Espionage Campaign Borrows from Cybercriminals

More and more, we’re hearing about a crossing of the streams, if you will, between cybercrime and state-sponsored attackers. Elements of malware, code persistence and distribution techniques are bleeding over between one realm of hacking into the other as each side tries to fill gaps in their...

NBC Website Hacked, Leading Visitors to Citadel Banking Malware

Another day, another media company hacked. This time it’s NBC which has fallen to victim hackers on the heels of compromises of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal websites. Various experts have confirmed that NBC’s website is compromised and leading visitors to the dangerous Citadel banki...

Some Versions of Ruby on Rails Vulnerable to New Parsing Attack

A vulnerability exists in Ruby on Rails’ JavaScript Object Notation JSON code that could open the Web framework up to a slew of security problems. Patches were published yesterday, but if left unpatched, the vulnerability could let attackers bypass authentication systems, inject arbitrary SQL cod...

New Java Attack Introduced into Cool Exploit Kit

A new exploit has been found in the Cool Exploit Kit for a vulnerability in Java 7 Update 7 as well as older versions, a flaw that’s been patched by Oracle in Java 7 Update 9. Cool Exploit Kit was discovered last month and is largely responsible for dropping the Reveton ransomware. A new Metasplo...

Apple Fixes Flaws, Updates Java 6 for OS X

Apple pushed out a Java update for its Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion systems Wednesday, fixing vulnerabilities Oracle tackled in last week’s emergency CVE-2012-4681 patch. Both Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 10 and Java for OS X 2012-005 update the Java SE 6 plugin and, in what might be a...

Fake AT&T Emails Using Blackhole Exploit Kit to Install Malware

For the last few weeks there have been a series of quite authentic-looking phishing emails making the rounds, purporting to come from AT&T and informing the recipient that their bill is ready to view. The emails look nearly identical to a real bill and researchers say that users who fall for the...

MSXML Exploit Surfaces in Black Hole Kit

Attackers really like exploit kits because they offer users the ease of point-and-click exploitation, lots of potential targets and don’t require a huge amount of technical knowledge to use. Attackers also enjoy Microsoft vulnerabilities, especially unpatched ones, because of the massive installe...

PHP Group Set to Release Another Patch for CVE-2012-1823 Flaw

The PHP Group on Tuesday is planning to release another new version of the scripting language that’s designed to address, again, the remotely exploitable flaw that came to light last week. That bug, which requires no authentication, was supposed to have been fixed in new releases pushed out on Ma...

Microsoft to Issue Seven Bulletins, One Critical, on Patch Tuesday

Microsoft plans to issue seven security bulletins in the January Patch Tuesday release next week, fixing six vulnerabilities rated important and one rated critical. The bugs affect a variety of products, including Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003 and 2008 and Microsoft Developer Tools an...

Hack-a-mole: Disgruntled Programmer Accused of Sabotaging Arcade Game Classic

Marvin Walter Wimberly, Jr., a sixty one year-old programmer and game board designer has been charged by authorities in Florida with committing computer crimes with the intent to defraud after his employer, game maker Bob’s Space Racers BSR uncovered an elaborate scheme in which popular arcade...

Facebook Announces Hacker's Cup

Social networking Web site Facebook has announced that they will begin accepting registrations for the 2011 Hacker Cup, the first annual programming and puzzle solving contest open to software engineers, programmers, puzzle solvers and assorted hackers from around the world.Facebook said this wee...

New Windows netbooks may harbor malware

From Computerworld Gregg Keizer After discovering attack code on a brand new Windows XP netbook, anti-virus vendor Kaspersky Labs warned users yesterday that they should scan virgin systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet. When Kaspersky developers installed their...

‘Callback’ Phishing Campaign Impersonates Security Firms

A new callback phishing campaign is impersonating prominent security companies to try to trick potential victims into making a phone call that will instruct them to download malware. Researchers at CrowdStrike Intelligence discovered the campaign because CrowdStrike is actually one of the...

‘Killnet’ Adversary Pummels Lithuania with DDoS Attacks Over Blockade

Russia-linked cyber collective Killnet has claimed responsibility for DDoS attacks Monday on the Lithuanian government and other entities in the Baltic country over closure of transit routes within the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, according to researchers. The threat group warns that it will...

Threat Actors Use Telegram to Spread ‘Eternity’ Malware-as-a-Service

Cybercriminals are promoting a new, modular malware-as-a-service offering that allows would-be attackers to choose from a cornucopia of threats via a Telegram channel that to date has more than 500 subscribers, researchers have found. The new malware service, dubbed the Eternity Project by the...

AdSanity, AccessPress Plugins Open Scads of WordPress Sites to Takeover

The WordPress content management system CMS is offering admins more headaches this week, thanks to a pair of disparate but concerning security problems in add-ons for the platform. The first issue affects the WordPress AdSanity plugin. It’s a critical security vulnerability that could allow remot...

A Guide to Doing Cyberintelligence on a Restricted Budget

For those in the industry, it comes as no surprise that many cybersecurity programs have been impacted by loss of revenue during the pandemic. From cutting tooling and feed budgets to reduction in staff, it’s been challenging at best. In a recent SANS 2021 survey, “Threat Hunting In Uncertain...

Feds Warn BlackMatter Ransomware Gang is Poised to Strike

Federal authorities are warning businesses to shore up cybersecurity defenses as it carefully monitors the reemergence of the DarkSide ransomware gang, believed responsible for the crippling Colonial Pipeline attack in May 2021. The ransomware-as-a-service gang has regrouped under the moniker...

Azure Zero-Day Bugs Show Lurking Supply-Chain Risk

Four Microsoft zero-day vulnerabilities in the Azure cloud platform’s Open Management Infrastructure OMI — a software that many don’t know is embedded in a host of services — show that OMI represents a significant security blind spot, researchers said. Collectively dubbed “OMIGOD” because of the...

QR Code Scammers Get Creative with Bitcoin ATMs

With the use of QR codes rising, so, too, are the numbers of scams that aim to take advantage of them. Researchers warned that threat actors are going so far as to send potential victims to gas stations to use Bitcoin ATMs in their endeavors to exploit the technology. The Better Business Bureau B...

MacOS Flaw in Telegram Retrieves Deleted Messages

A vulnerability in a high-level privacy feature of Telegram on macOS that sets up a “self-destruct” timer for messages on both the sender’s and recipient’s devices can allow someone to retrieve these messages even after they’ve been deleted, a researcher has found. Reegun Richard Jayapaul,...

Cyber-Insurance Fuels Ransomware Payment Surge

Ransomware victims are increasingly falling back on their cyber-insurance providers to pay the ransom when they’re hit with an extortion cyberattack. But security researchers warn that this approach can quickly become problematic. In the first half of 2020, ransomware attacks accounted for 41...

Combatting Insider Threats with Keyboard Security

As cyberattacks snowball and insider threats become an ever-larger part of the problem, it may be time to move beyond purely software-based cyber-defenses. Implementing hardware-based security, like secure keyboards, can be an important part of the mix. Those in IT-leadership roles are well aware...

A Post-Data Privacy World and Data-Rights Management

The reality is that today, almost everyone is being tracked and monitored 24/7 with cameras recording our expressions, interactions and speech to determine what we might be thinking, where we are going and who we are meeting. While privacy differs from nation to nation and culture to culture, one...

Lazarus Targets Defense Companies with ThreatNeedle Malware

The prolific North Korean APT known as Lazarus is behind a spear-phishing campaign aimed at stealing critical data from defense companies by leveraging an advanced malware called ThreatNeedle, new research has revealed. The elaborate and ongoing cyberespionage campaign used emails with COVID-19...

Microsoft Office 365 Attacks Sparked from Google Firebase

A phishing campaign bent on stealing Microsoft login credentials is using Google Firebase to bypass email security measures in Microsoft Office 365, researchers said. Researchers at Armorblox uncovered invoice-themed emails sent to at least 20,000 mailboxes that purport to share information about...

Outgoing FCC Chair Issues Final Security Salvo Against China

Outgoing Federal Communications Chair Ajit Pai has issued a final warning about Chinese telcos at the end of a tenure spent cracking down on companies like Huawei, ZTE and China Telecom. Pai, a former telecommunications industry lobbyist and in-house counsel for Verizon, told Reuters that managin...

Florida Ethics Officer Charged with Cyberstalking

A Tallahassee city ethics officer was arrested and charged with cyberstalking her coworker and former lover, and is now banned by a judge from using the internet for anything besides work, paying bills and her legal defense. Julie Meadows-Keef is accused of cyberstalking Bert Fletcher, the...

'Amnesia:33' TCP/IP Flaws Affect Millions of IoT Devices

Researchers – as well as the U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency CISA – are warning of a set of serious vulnerabilities affecting TCP/IP stacks. The flaws impact millions of internet-of-things IoT devices and embedded systems, including smart thermometers, smart plugs and printers...

Turla's 'Crutch' Backdoor Leverages Dropbox in Espionage Attacks

Researchers have discovered a previously undocumented backdoor and document stealer, which they have linked to the Russian-speaking Turla advanced persistent threat APT espionage group. The malware, which researchers call “Crutch,” is able to bypass security measures by abusing legitimate tools –...

Amazon Fires Employee Who Leaked Customer Names, Emails

Amazon has fired an employee who shared customers’ names and email addresses with a third party. An Amazon spokesperson told Threatpost that it has systems in place to limit and control access to information, and processes in place for identifying and investigating suspicious behavior. These...

Paving the Path to Passwordless

Passwords seem to be the digital equivalent of the phrase, “can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.” They’re supposed to protect sensitive information and data, but passwords can also be incredibly frustrating; you shouldn’t use the same one across the board, which means you probably have...

Credit-Card Skimmer Has Unlikely Target: Microsoft ASP.NET Sites

Researchers have identified a credit-card skimming campaign that’s been active since mid-April that has a rather specific and unusual target: ASP.NET-based websites running on Microsoft Internet Information Services IIS servers. New research from Malwarebytes Labs recently uncovered the campaign,...

Hakbit Ransomware Attack Uses GuLoader, Malicious Microsoft Excel Attachments

A ransomware campaign, dubbed Hakbit, is targeting mid-level employees across Austria, Switzerland and Germany with malicious Excel attachments delivered via the popular email provider GMX. The spear-phishing based campaign is low volume and so far targeted the pharmaceutical, legal, financial,...

Steganography Anchors Pinpoint Attacks on Industrial Targets

A targeted series of attacks on suppliers of equipment and software for industrial enterprises is playing out globally, researchers said, hinging on phishing and a steganography tactic to hide malware on public, legitimate image resources. According to Kaspersky ICS CERT, the attacks seem bent on...